Night Terrors
by Cke1st
Summary: An unwelcome face from the past makes a surprise reappearance on Berk. Now one of Hiccup's friends may be gone forever, and the others are trapped in unfamiliar bodies. Their only hope lies in a dragon who doesn't know how to fly. Rated K-plus, just to be safe; the language is all K.
1. Chapter 1

**Night Terrors** Chapter 1

 _A/N  
An unwelcome face from the past makes a surprise reappearance on Berk. Now Hiccup and his friends may never be the same, and one of them may be gone forever. Their only hope lies in a dragon who doesn't know how to fly. __Rated K-plus, just to be safe; the language is all K._

 **o**

"You are not welcome here."

Stoick's voice was flat and emotionless, his facial expression was neutral, but his body language was unmistakable. His presence on the town docks was like a stone wall, blocking any and all access to his island from the man who stood in the longship nearby. Hiccup stood about ten steps away, listening to every word but taking no action. His father had seen this situation developing before the ship even reached the docks, and "suggested" to his son that this would be a good time for him to listen and learn how chiefs handle unwanted visitors.

"This isn't like last time, Chief Stoick," Arngrim Dammen said smoothly. "I'm not after dragons, or slaves, or anything that's yours. I just want to sell some of my furs here, while I'm in the neighborhood. You once admitted that my furs were warmer and softer than anything else you'd ever seen, right? I promise you, that hasn't changed. What harm can a little innocent trading do?"

"Quite a bit," Berk's chief rumbled harshly. "I've seen what kind of man you are, and I'm sure _that_ hasn't changed, either. I don't know what kind of game you're playing today, but you are _not_ going to play it in my village."

"Very well – I won't set foot in your village," the Northlander nodded amiably. "I'll stay in my ship, and anyone who wants to trade with me can stand on the docks, or join me on board. Is that reasonable?" When Stoick didn't soften his belligerent stance, Arngrim added, "I remind you that free trade is one of the cornerstones of Viking society, Stoick."

Stoick thought about that. "I suppose you'll tell all the other traders that Berk is an unfriendly place for trading unless I let you swindle a few of my citizens. Am I right?"

"I'd hate to put it on those terms," the Northlander replied, "but if someone like Trader Johann asks me what kind of welcome I got here, I'm not going to lie to him."

"Will you give your word of honor to stay in your ship?"

"I do," Arngrim replied, touching his chest. "I ask only that my mother be allowed to come ashore to stretch her legs while I'm here. I think that's a reasonable request; we've been at sea for days." He gestured toward a gray, shapeless lump of fabric sitting on a bench seat. The lump wore boots and gloves, and a few strands of long, unkempt gray hair escaped from the opening of the hood that covered her head.

Stoick lowered his voice, which was always an effort for him. "Why does she hide her face?"

Arngrim leaned over to whisper in Stoick's ear. "She was attacked by an angry Changewing eight years ago. She survived its acid attack, but it wasn't pretty... and now, neither is she. She hides her face so she won't frighten people." Stoick shivered at the thought.

"Very well," he grumbled. "You may stay in your ship and trade with anyone who is willing to forget the past and make a deal with you. Your mother may come ashore... but she will be watched wherever she goes!"

Arngrim Dammen looked hurt. "You don't trust my old, gray-haired mother?"

"I don't know if she's trustworthy or not," the chief shot back, "but I definitely do not trust _you!"_ He extended a hand toward the woman. "May I help you ashore?"

"You are very kind, Chief Stoick," she croaked. She stood stiffly, extended a gloved hand to take his hand, and awkwardly climbed over the gunwale onto the dock.

Stoick released her hand, then turned to Hiccup. "Son, go find the Hofferson girl," he said formally. "Tell her that the chief has excused her from all chores and responsibilities for the day. Until I say otherwise, her only task is to keep this woman company wherever she goes... and I mean that literally!"

"I'll go find her," Hiccup nodded, turned, and ran up the ramps to the village. Finding Astrid wouldn't be hard; he knew her schedule and her habits. The hard part would be convincing her that following an old woman around was more important than practicing in the woods with her axe. By the time he'd persuaded her that his father really meant it, the old woman had disappeared into the village and it took Astrid nearly half an hour to find her. She finally turned up in the women's bathhouse... which, Astrid had to admit, was a natural place to look for a woman who'd been cooped up on a small ship for days.

"What's your name, ma'am?" Astrid asked respectfully.

"I am called Auga Bjornsdottir," she answered slowly. "Thank you for keeping me company in a strange place. I'm sure a strong young girl like you has better things to do."

Astrid didn't want to remind her that she was under orders to keep Auga company if she'd somehow forgotten that. It was sad when older people began to lose their memory. "I'm glad to help. Is there any place you'd like me to take you?"

"Well... I don't want to be a bother, but my son tells me that this island has dragons on it. Is there a place where I can see them without putting myself in danger?"

"That's easy!" Astrid exclaimed. "I can take you to the training ring; there are always some dragons there. But it's a bit of a walk from here to there."

"That's all right," Auga said. "I'm not in a hurry." Astrid patiently led her to the ring, where she was treated to the sight of Fishlegs scratching Meatlug's belly with a rake. The old woman seemed to find that fascinating.

Meanwhile, it looked like half the village wanted to trade with Arngrim Dammen and acquire some of his furs. He was making deals, one after another, and his stacks of trade goods were steadily getting smaller. It looked like he would sell out his entire stock before the sun went down. Stoick checked up on him several times; Arngrim was a sharp trader who drove a hard bargain, but there was no evidence of cheating or deception, and the Northlander had made no attempt to leave his ship. Perhaps the man had really changed.

Hiccup had decided that, if he should be learning how to be a chief and handle situations like this, he could do a better job of it on Toothless' back. After all, nearly everything he did turned out better when his Night Fury friend was involved. The pair flew broad figure-eights over the island, keeping Astrid and Auga in view for a few minutes, then checking up on the Northlander's ship in the harbor. He could see nothing that ought to make him nervous, but he remained vigilant nonetheless, just in case his father asked him how he'd used his time today.

He overflew the training ring again and watched as the two women strolled around the perimeter, trying to get a better view of the dragon inside. A minute later, they were watching the dragons inside; Snotlout on Hookfang flew into the ring, followed by the twins on Barf and Belch, then by Stormfly who was flying with them. He flinched as the older woman tripped over a loose stone, then relaxed as she caught herself... and then he went rigid as he realized what he'd just seen.

"Toothless, land, right there!" he exclaimed as he pointed. The Night Fury grunted and swooped down for a quick landing on the other side of the ring from Astrid and Auga. "Guys, get up here, quick!" he shouted to his friends in the ring.

"What's going on?" Snotlout asked as he pounded up the ramp to join him, with Fishlegs, Ruffnut and Tuffnut right behind him.

"Follow me," Hiccup said. "I may need some backup."

"That sounds like it might be dangerous," Ruff observed.

"We're in," Tuff nodded. The five of them walked around the ring, with Toothless padding curiously behind them as they approached Astrid and Auga.

"Is something wrong?" Astrid wondered.

"The answer is, 'Yes, but I'm not sure what,' " Hiccup replied. He faced Auga squarely. "You can drop the hood. Your secret is out."

"I don't know what you mean, young man," she answered slowly.

"I was watching from above when you tripped over that stone," Hiccup said accusingly. "The way you caught yourself was way too quick and agile for an aged woman. I think you're closer to our age. In fact, I think you might be Heather in disguise, playing some new kind of game. So, off with the hood and let's see what you really look like!"

"If you insist," she answered, in a voice that suddenly sounded decades younger. Instead of removing her hood, she pulled the ends of two knotted drawstrings and let her gray cloak fall away. Then she pulled off her gray wig.

Hiccup was right about her age. But it wasn't Heather. It was a sharp-faced blonde woman in a short dress with red flames around the waist, and something bulky and made of leather tucked into her furry belt.

"Skuld!" Hiccup exclaimed.

"Skuld the Sorceress," she corrected him.

"You mean Skuld the Not-sorceress!" Ruff countered.

"Skuld the Phony!" her brother added.

"We remember the trick you played on us last time, taking the credit for a solar eclipse," Fishlegs said accusingly. "You won't get away with it again, even if there _is_ another eclipse!"

"Nice legs, though," Snotlout smirked. They moved to trap her against the edge of the training ring.

"I warn you, don't underestimate me," she threatened them. "I've been taking lessons from an old _seid-kona,_ and my powers are much more formidable than last time."

Astrid grinned as she unslung her axe. "More formidable than nothing? What are you going to do this time? Predict _two_ eclipses?"

"Or maybe she'll throw some of her potion bottles at us!" Tuff scoffed.

"My dad was right about not trusting Arngrim Dammen," Hiccup decided. "If he brought you here in disguise, then you're both up to no good. I'll let my dad deal with Arngrim. But right now, you're surrounded, you're outnumbered, and I have my dragon with me, so I suggest that you surrender quietly."

"Yes, you _do_ have your dragon with you, don't you?" she purred. "I don't think I'll get a better chance to try my new trick than this!" She crossed her arms at the wrists and began hopping from one foot to the other. No one dared touch her as she chanted,

"Najeneun ttasaroun inganjeogin yeoja!  
"Keopi hanjanui yeoyureul aneun pumgyeok inneun yeoja!  
"Oppan dragon style!"

Then she uncrossed her arms and swept them outward, gesturing to all six teens and to Toothless who was just behind them...

...and with seven loud popping noises, the teens and the Night Fury vanished. In their places stood seven immobile Terrible Terrors, each of a different color.

It was hard to say who was more astonished, the teens or the sorceress.

 **o**

 _A/N_  
 _Arngrim Dammen and Skuld the Sorceress are characters from the HTTYD comic books. I haven't read actually read them, but between the HTTYD wiki and the pictures posted online, I've got a fair idea of what the characters are like._


	2. Chapter 2

**Night Terrors** Chapter 2

 _A/N_  
 _To the guest named The Skrillrider, who asked who Skuld is: I can't reply to you because the site doesn't let me send messages to guest accounts, so I had to put my answer here. The answer is: read the author's note at the bottom of Chapter 1. But since you didn't read that note, you might not read this one either, so I might be wasting my time here._

 **o**

"It worked!" Skuld blurted out. "It actually worked, just like that old witch said it would! I can't believe it!"

The seven newly-transformed Terrible Terrors blinked at her, and the purple one let out a soft whimper, but otherwise they did not respond.

"Oh, don't worry," she said condescendingly. "The paralysis ought to wear off in a few minutes, and the transformation spell will cancel itself in two or three days. You're not stuck like this forever... although I admit, it would be fun to leave you this way, as payback for what you did to me last time! But I shouldn't be monologuing; I came here for something important." She pulled a heavy leather sack off of her belt. Then she deftly scooped up the unresisting black Terror and stuffed it into the sack, which she tied shut with a leather thong.

"The leather has some air holes punched in it," she said to the sack, "but if you try to use fire in there, you'll suffocate yourself, so don't try it. Oh, but I forget – you're a dragon and you can't understand me! How sad." She looked at the others and smirked. "As for the rest of you, don't get any ideas about rescuing your pet dragon! By the time you get your own bodies back, I'll be long gone. You can't chase me down from the air because you don't know how to fly, and you'll never learn that art in time to make any difference. Arngrim Dammen and I are leaving Berk now with the ultimate prize – the world's only Night Fury, shrunk down to travel size! Arngrim says he knows how to safely strap it down when the spell wears off and it turns back into a full-sized dragon. And then, Viggo Grimborn is going to pay! Oh, he'll gladly pay a chief's ransom for a prize like this one. We'll be rich! I'll never have to work again for the rest of my life!" She laughed. "Oh, and thank you for cooperating by clustering together, so I could enspell all of you at the same time. Just for once, a plan worked perfectly!" She put the gray wig back on, pulled her gray cape over herself, and hunched over to hide the sack. "Bye-bye, little dragons," she croaked in her old-woman voice, and hobbled back toward the docks.

The six remaining Terrible Terrors slowly regained the use of their unfamiliar bodies. The purple one was the first to speak. "Guys... this is... really, really bad."

The blue one didn't answer, but waved its foreleg back and forth and stared at it. The orange one experimentally fanned its wings, the green one waved its tail back and forth, the red one stuck its tongue out to see how far it would go, and the yellow one remained motionless, looking completely stunned.

"Can any of you talk?" the purple one asked.

Croak... grunt... hiss... and the blue one said, "I think so." It looked startled at the sound of its own voice. "I'm talking like a Terrible Terror!"

"I think you _are_ a Terrible Terror," said the purple one. "We all are. But I can understand you. I'm Hiccup. Which one are you?"

"I'm Fishlegs, or at least, I used to be Fishlegs," the blue one answered. "Everything feels wrong now! I never had wings and a tail before. So this is how Meatlug feels."

"Ngh... ngh... I can talk, too!" announced the green one. "I'm Ruffnut. How come I look like a dragon now?"

"Be... be... because that sorceress-lady played a trick on us," said the red one. "Playing tricks on Berk's people is _our_ racket, Ruff! She's moving in on our territory. We need to pay her back for this."

"I'm in," she answered, "but... how?"

"Duh!" her brother burst out. "We're dragons now! We can fly! We can shoot fire! We can burn that witch's britches so bad, she'll never go near Berk again!"

"Witch's britches!" the Ruffnut-dragon cackled. "My brother made a funny!"

"There's one small problem," Fishlegs interjected. "We don't know how to do any of those things."

"Well, how hard can it be?" Tuff retorted. "The stupid dragons can do it, so why can't we?"

"Don't look now," the yellow one cut in, "but you _are_ a stupid dragon! We're all stupid dragons, even me. And I should have turned into a Monstrous Nightmare, not a wimpy little yellow Terrible Terror!" He tried to hide his head under his wing. "My father will never forgive me for this."

"That has to be Snotlout," Hiccup nodded, and glanced at the orange one. "So you must be Astrid, right? You haven't said anything yet. Are you okay?"

The orange one glared at him. "I am not Astrid," he said haughtily. "My name is Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night."

They all stared at him, dumbfounded. At last, Hiccup found his voice again. Something about that tone of voice reminded him of... "Toothless?"

"That is what _you_ insist on calling me," the orange one replied.

"Oh, my gosh! Toothless, I can talk to you! And you can talk to me, and I can understand you! This is going to be amazing!"

Toothless grunted in disgust. "If you think being turned into a Small-insignificant-colorful-pain-in-the-neck is amazing, then I would hate to see your idea of bad news."

"But... I don't get it," Fishlegs stammered. "She took the black one, so that should have been Toothless, right?"

"Why are you assuming that our current colors have anything to do with our real coloration?" Toothless answered sharply. "You are blue now, but you were not blue in real life, am I correct?"

"Uhh, yeah, I guess you're right," Fishlegs admitted.

"Of course I am," the ex-Night Fury added smugly.

"And Skuld made the same assumption," Hiccup finished with a laugh. "She didn't keep track of who was standing where, she figured the black Terrible Terror had to be Toothless, and she took the wrong dragon!"

Tuffnut also laughed. "Boy, is she going to be mad when the spell wears off and she finds out she isn't getting a Night Fury!"

"Yes, she _will_ be mad," Hiccup said, suddenly very serious, "and she's got Astrid. She and Arngrim are kidnapping Astrid! We have to save her!"

"Can't she take care of herself, like she usually does?" Snotlout asked. Ruffnut was chasing her own tail and wasn't paying attention.

Hiccup shook his head. "We know that Arngrim Dammen is a slave trader when he's not trading furs. If they can't get sell Astrid to Viggo for dragon money, then they'll sell her to some other tribe as a slave. We've got to get her back before they can do that!"

"But, like... how?" Fishlegs pleaded. "We don't even know how to fly! Just learning the basics could take days."

"And the spell-lady said the spell will wear off in a few days," Ruff added. "As soon as we learn to fly, we'll turn back into people and we'll have to walk."

"We'll never catch them!" Snotlout said sadly.

"No, you're all wrong," Hiccup corrected them, "and Skuld is the most wrong of all! Not only did she grab the wrong Terrible Terror; she also left one behind who already knows how to fly because he's been flying all his life. And he can probably show us how to fly and breathe fire in hours, not days. Isn't that right, Toothless?"

The orange Terror looked irritated. "I told you, my name is Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night. And I would appreciate it if you would call me by my chosen name."

"Uhh, that's kind of a mouthful," Fishlegs said. "Can we call you Swift?"

"Can I call you Fish?" Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night retorted.

"Lots of people call me Legs, so I guess it's okay," he replied. Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night looked even more irritated.

Hiccup tried to smooth over the situation. "Look, Toothless... I mean, Swift-invisible-whatever. We really need your help if we're going to save Astrid, and every minute could be precious because we don't know how long we're going to be dragons. Can we skip the fighting over names and get on with the flying lessons?"

Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night sighed. "For you, Hiccup, I'll do it. First, I'll show you how to take off. You have to combine a powerful down-flap with a spring from all four legs. Like this!" He bounded into the air, flapped twice, spun out of control, and crash-landed hard on his side.

"Just like that, huh?" Tuff grinned.

Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night glanced back at himself in dismay. "Losing one of my tail fins was not bad enough? Now I have lost both of them! How can I maintain control in the air without my tail fins?"

"Other dragons do it all the time," Ruff commented.

"Yeah!" Snotlout added. "And there are dragons in the ring right next to us! Why don't we ask them how they do it?"

"There is no use in trying that," Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night said. "The larger species do not speak the same language as the Small-insignificant-colorful-pains-in-the-neck. Or the Terrible Terrors, as you call them. We cannot talk to each other."

"But you can talk to us Terrors, now that you're a Terror too," Hiccup thought out loud, "and you must remember how to talk to the larger dragons. Can't you be an interpreter between us and them?"

"It might take a day or more just to get them to acknowledge my existence," Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night answered. "We do not call them Small-insignificant-colorful-pains-in-the-neck because we enjoy their company. For the most part, we ignore them, unless they try to steal our fish. I will try, but I doubt that I will succeed." He stuck his head over the edge of the training ring and made some reptilian sounds. Stormfly, Meatlug, and Barf and Belch paid him no attention; Hookfang breathed a small jet of flame in his general direction, then lowered his head and went to sleep.

Meanwhile, Snotlout was jerking his hind leg back and forth, trying and failing to reach a spot on his back. "Hiccup, we can't rescue your girlfriend!" he burst out. "We don't know anything about how to be dragons! We can't even scratch where it itches!"

Fishlegs looked thoughtful. "I've seen Meatlug rolling around on her back when I wasn't nearby. I think that might be how she scratches her back."

"Forget it, Fishlegs! I am _not_ going to imitate your stupid Gronckle!"

"She's not stupid!" Fishlegs protested angrily.

"You would be wise to think it over, Muscular-dumb-boy-with-curly-horns," Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night advised him. "That is, in fact, the best way to scratch an itch that is out of reach. But I do not think that scratching itches should take priority over learning how to fly."

"Hey, did you hear that?" Tuff interrupted with a malevolent grin. "Muscular-dumb-boy-with-curly-horns! That's your name in dragon language, Fishlegs!"

"I don't think he was talking about me," Legs answered hesitantly.

"Yeah!" Lout chimed in. "I'm the one with the curly horns on my helmet, so I'm the... wait, what?"

"Excuse me, Mister Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night," Fishlegs went on, "but does everybody have a long, complicated name in dragon language?"

"We do not assign permanent labels to ourselves, or to others," the orange Terror replied. "I go by Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night because it is an accurate description of me, and it pleases me. Some other dragons use that name for me as well. The queen dragon called me He-who-never-steals-food-never-shows-himself-and-never-misses, but she is gone now, and no one else wants to use her name for me. I have also been called Black-death-who-flies-in-darkness, Blaster-from-the-hidden-moon, Stealthy-avenger-against-Vikings, Nocturnal-assassin-of-the-speedy-wing, and Bruce."

"Bruce?" Hiccup echoed, surprised.

"That was from a simple-minded Gronckle with no imagination," Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night snapped. "It wasn't just me; he called every dragon in the nest Bruce. He said it kept things clear."

"Was his name Bruce?" Fishlegs wondered.

"No, he called himself Barney," Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night answered. "He said he didn't want to confuse himself with anyone else. But the rest of us called him Bruce because that name reminded us of him."

"So if any dragon can call any other dragon any name they want," Hiccup thought out loud, "then why can't we call you Toothless?"

The former Night Fury sighed. "I suppose I will allow it... from you, my friend." He glared at the others. "But the rest of you may call me Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night if you want me to teach you how to be dragons! Is that clear?"

"Perfectly, sir." That was Fishlegs.  
"Yeah, I get it." That was Tuffnut.  
"Fine, whatever." That was Ruffnut.

Snotlout didn't answer. He was rolling around on his back.


	3. Chapter 3

**Night Terrors** Chapter 3

"Okay, we can argue about what to call each other later," Hiccup begged them. "We really need to –"

"You can call me 'awesome!' " Tuff interrupted.

"No, I'm the awesome one!" Ruff disagreed. She jerked her foreleg, then made a disgusted face. "This dragon body is useless! What good is flying if I can't punch my brother when he's being an idiot?"

"Neither of you is called 'awesome' among the dragons, or anything close to it," Toothless cut in. He gestured to Ruff with a wingtip. "You are known as Crazy-four-horns-not-smart-female."

"At least they got the 'crazy' part right," she muttered. "And the 'female' part. Thanks for small favors."

"And what about me?" Tuff demanded. "Am I Crazy-four-horns-not-smart-male?"

"No, we refer to you as Brother-of-crazy-four-horns-not-smart-female."

 _"What?!_ I don't even get my own name?!" Tuff was outraged.

"I don't dare ask what the dragons call me," Fishlegs whispered to Hiccup. Toothless overheard him.

"Most of us call you Large-friendly-boy-who-knows-much-but-understands-little. Except for your Gronckle friend, whom you think of as Meatlug. She calls you Nice-doggie-nice-doggie. She does not know what it means, but she heard you say it in the village and she likes the way it sounds."

"I remember that," Fishlegs mused unhappily. "Bjorn the Butterball's hunting dog got loose, and I was asking it not to eat me. And now that's Meatlug's name for me? I don't know if I should be insulted or not."

"At least they gave you your own name," Tuff grumbled.

"What about him?" Snotlout demanded, pointing with a wingtip at Hiccup.

"I call him my friend," Toothless said simply.

"That's not fair!" Tuffnut burst out. "You should call him something like Skinny-no-muscles-one-legged-uncool –"

 _"GUYS!"_ the Hiccup-dragon shouted. "We can talk about this later! We've _got_ to learn some dragon lessons from Toothless so we can rescue Astrid!"

"I appreciate your confidence in me, Hiccup," Toothless said, "but there are two big problems with that idea. The first is that I am unfamiliar with these bodies that we inhabit. I have always flown with two wings, two sub-wings, and two tail fins. Now my sub-wings and tail fins are gone, and I do not know how to fly without them. I certainly cannot teach _you_ how to fly without them."

"What's the other problem, Mister Swift-invisible-destroyer-in-the-night, sir?" Fishlegs asked.

Toothless hung his head. "I have... I have become... orange," he replied sadly. "Oh, the shame of it! No self-respecting Night Fury would ever be caught dead wearing any color except basic black. If my friends saw me this way, they would make a laughingstock out of me. I do not dare venture out where I might be seen."

"Yeah, well, I'm not so keen on being yellow, either," Snotlout muttered.

"And what about me?" Ruff added. "It's not easy being green!"

"Toothless, it's okay," Hiccup reassured him. "You just tried to talk to your full-sized friends a minute ago, and they didn't even recognize you. Your reputation is safe with us."

"No, wait a second," Ruff interrupted. "There must be some way we can have fun with this. I mean, if being black makes him a Night Fury, then being orange would make him a...?"

"A Sunset Fury?" Fishlegs wondered.

"An Orange Fury!" Tuff added.

"A Night Fury that you can see at night!" was Snotlout's suggestion.

Toothless sidled up to Hiccup. "My friend," he said quietly, "can we leave these useless losers to their mindless noise, and rescue your future mate by ourselves?"

'For one thing, we might need their help before we're done," Hiccup answered. "Two Terrible Terrors isn't much against a couple of armed Vikings, but six of us can probably do some damage. For another thing, they're my friends and I don't want to leave them behind. Who knows how badly they could hurt themselves in these new bodies, or what kind of trouble they could get into? And for a third thing, I know what it's like to be called 'useless,' and I don't think they'll like it any better than I did. We're not a perfect team, but we are a team and we need to stay together."

"As you wish," Toothless said after a moment.

"So... what happens next?" Hiccup asked him.

"I know how to fly, but not in a body like this," he replied. "I suppose we should find a flock of those Small-insignificant-colorful-pains-in-the-neck and ask them to help us. Once I've learned how to control myself in flight without tail fins, then I can show the technique to you. And the others," he added after a quick pause.

"That sounds like a good plan," Hiccup nodded vigorously. "But maybe you should call them Terrible Terrors? They may not want to help us if we call them Small-insignificant-whatevers. That sounds insulting."

"Old habits are hard to break," Toothless shrugged. "But I will try, for your sake. Where shall we look for these... these Terrible Terrors?"

"They like caves, big hollow trees, and the undersides of raised buildings," Hiccup answered as he looked around for any of the places he'd just mentioned.

"I know where we can find a nest of them!" the Fishlegs-dragon burst out. "Underneath our woodshed! There's at least seven or eight of them down there. My mother is always afraid they're going to flame something and set the woodpile on fire."

"That sounds like a great place to start," Hiccup decided. "Fishlegs, lead the way."

"Oh, no, he does not!" exclaimed Toothless as he jumped in front of the blue Terror. "I am a Night Fury. _I_ lead the way!"

"Bud," Hiccup said gently, "you don't know where we're going."

"And besides," Snotlout added tactlessly, "you're not a Night Fury anymore! You're little, you're orange, and you can't even fly! You're just like one of us!"

The orange Terror didn't say a word. He hung his head and walked away from the others. The purple one rushed to his side.

"Way to go, idiot!" the green one scolded the yellow one. "You hurt his feelings!"

"Hey, he deserved it," Snotlout said casually. "He thinks he's better than us, just because he's a dragon."

"No," Hiccup shot back. "He thinks he's better than us because he _is_ better than us! He's brave, skillful, trustworthy, and a true friend. If you knew him like I know him, you'd be the first in line to admit that. Yeah, he's got a bit of an ego, but if anyone ever _deserved_ to have a bit of an ego, it's him."

"Do you mean that?" Toothless asked him softly.

"Every word of it, and a lot more words that I could have said, but didn't," Hiccup reassured him. "Besides, this Terrible Terror spell is only temporary! We'll all be back to normal in a few days. I'll be Hiccup, you'll be black..."

"...and I'll be amazing," Snotlout finished.

"No, you will just be Snotlout," Toothless shot back, his confidence restored. "It is a shame that you will not stay as you are now; it suits you. Yellow is the color of cowards who hide behind brave-sounding words because that is all they have!"

"Is that what you think, mister orange hot-shot?"

"Guys, we have more important things to do than fight each other," Hiccup warned them.

"No, I think fighting this lizard is the most important thing in the world right now," Snotlout answered proudly. "For years, I've wanted to show your big-shot dragon who's the real Viking around here, and now that we're the same size, now's my perfect chance!"

"Do you really think it is wise to provoke a Night Fury?" Toothless asked, his voice a deadly calm. The others edged away from him.

"You're no Night Fury! You're just a little orange lizard! I don't need a mace and shield to take you down, you undersized... why are you hissing at me?"

He found out a moment later. Toothless' hissing sound was the standard Terrible Terror prelude to a perfectly-aimed burst of flame. It did Snotlout no harm, of course – most dragons are fireproof on the outside – but he had to close his eyes for a moment to protect them against the fire. In that moment, Toothless leaped beside him, flipped him on his back with a quick tail-twist, and pounced with the claws of both forepaws at Snotlout's throat. Snotlout tried to fight back, but with each motion, Toothless bore down harder on the yellow dragon's throat. Any sane warrior would have yielded after a few seconds of this, but Snotlout wouldn't back down, even if it killed him.

It was Hiccup who intervened. "Whoa! Time out! Game over!" he announced. " I'm proclaiming Toothless the winner. Now, both of you, back off and let's focus on learning how to be dragons, okay?"

"I would have beaten him in a minute if you didn't stick your nose in," Snotlout protested tightly, even though his throat was still under Toothless' claws.

"That one says he can't fly, but he already knows how to breathe fire like a dragon," Tuff said. "Is he telling us any other lies?"

 _"Toothless is not a liar!"_ Hiccup nearly shrieked. His intensity startled the others.

"I suspected that our fires in these bodies would work much the same as my blowtorch-breath," Toothless said casually as he withdrew his claws from the vicinity of Snotlout's jugular vein. "I was correct; I can teach you the basics of breathing fire, and the basics should be adequate for our mission. But I still require some flying lessons from Small-insignificant... I mean from Terrible Terrors who know how it is done."

Ruffnut checked to make sure Snotlout wasn't hurt. "What came over you, dude?" she asked. "You actually challenged a Night Fury to a fight? That was stupid, even for you!"

"I don't know," he admitted as he shook the dust off his flanks. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"I think I know what's happening," Fishlegs decided. "We're thinking with Terrible Terrors' brains now, and those guys are always ready for a fight. That's going to affect how we think, until we get our own bodies and our own brains back."

"That makes a lot of sense, Legs," Hiccup nodded. "If you're right, then we need to get busy before the dragons' brains take over our thinking and we forget about everything except fighting and fish. Fishlegs, you guide us to your family's woodshed. Toothless, you'll go in front. Take your cues from Fishlegs." That solution seemed to make everyone happy. The six Terrors headed off toward the town, learning to walk on four legs as they went.

"I just had a thought," Fishlegs whispered to Hiccup.

"That sounds like it might be bad," the purple Terror whispered back.

"We know that Skuld is a liar," the blue one went on. "What if she's lying about this spell she cast on us? What if it's really permanent, and she said that stuff about it wearing off to keep us from learning how to be dragons so we couldn't chase her?"

"I was right; that's bad," Hiccup grimaced. "There's no way we can know about that for sure. But one thing I _do_ know for sure is that we have to rescue Astrid, no matter what kind of bodies we've got. If the spell wears off, then we're good. If it doesn't... then we'll deal with that, one step at a time. Let's stay focused on the job we have to do, and worry about the unknowns when we have some free time for worrying."

"Got it," the Fishlegs-dragon nodded.

"Now I've got a question," the yellow one asked. "How come we didn't just chase the sorcery-lady on foot?"

"For one thing, we were paralyzed for several minutes, which gave her a huge head start," Hiccup began. "For another thing, even when she was pretending to walk like an old lady, she could still run faster than we could. And for a third thing, if we caught her, what would we do to her? Bite her on the ankle? The Vikings would think the dragons had turned on the poor old lady, and they'd take her side. We'd all be dead in minutes."

"So what's the plan?" he asked.

"First, we have to learn how to fly and fight like Terrible Terrors," the purple Terror answered. "Then we have to find Arngrim's ship. I'm not sure what happens after that, but don't worry. I'll come up with something."

It normally took the teens about eight minutes to walk from the training ring back to the village. As Terrible Terrors on foot, it took them almost half an hour. Several Vikings watched the colorful parade of little dragons striding along and commented, "Isn't that cute?" which irked them all. As for the new Terrors, they were disturbed at the sight of humans, even children, towering over them. Eventually, they reached their goal, and they could see a handful of Terrors sound asleep under the wood pile.

Their route had taken them through the center of the village, so they didn't go near the forge. If they had, they would have seen Gobber gesture to get Chief Stoick's attention. "Have ye seen me wayward apprentice lately?"

"No, I haven't," Stoick replied. "I've been looking for him myself. I need to tell him that Arngrim Dammen and his mother have left Berk, so he and the Hofferson girl can return to their usual work."

"I'll let 'im know when I see 'im," Gobber nodded. "After I give 'im a good whack on th' arm fer bein' so late!"

"You may have to find a new way to get his attention, Gobber," Stoick said with a shake of his head. "That girlfriend of his gives him so many whacks on the arm, he may not even notice them anymore."


	4. Chapter 4

**Night Terrors** Chapter 4

"There they are!" the Fishlegs-dragon exclaimed as they spotted the nest of Terrible Terrors beneath his family's woodshed. "I was right."

"Yup," the Hiccup-dragon nodded. "Toothless, you've had the most practice getting along with dragons. You do the talking."

"Very well," the orange Terror nodded. He stepped forward and cleared his throat. Two of the seven Terrors in the nest woke up and glanced at him curiously.

"Good afternoon," Toothless began.

"We've got room for one or two more, but not all six of you," the yellow one said without preamble.

"We are not looking for a nest, thank you," Toothless replied. "We need some help in learning how to fly."

All of the Terrors in the nest came awake, glanced at each other, and burst out laughing.

"Hey, this isn't funny!" Snotlout called over the noise of their laughter. "We really need help!"

"You need some kind of help, that's for sure," an older red female smirked.

"How could you have lived to adulthood if you can't fly?" the yellow one added.

"We just got turned into dragons!" Ruff tried to explain, but that only made the Terrors in the nest laugh harder.

"My acquaintances are telling the truth!" Toothless protested. "Until a few minutes ago, they were all humans!"

 _"They_ were humans?" asked the red one. "What were you?"

Toothless hung his head. "If you must know, I was a Night Fury." That set off an even bigger round of laughter. The yellow one dropped off his perch to confront Toothless nose-to-nose.

"You were a Night Fury?" he demanded. Toothless nodded imperceptibly. The yellow sniffed him, looked very surprised, and sniffed him again. "There's only one Night Fury around here. You say you're really him?" the yellow pressed him. Toothless nodded again.

The yellow tensed up. "That's very interesting, because I met this Night Fury once. Me and three of my friends landed on a stony beach and tried to share a pile of fish that he was keeping all to himself. He wouldn't share any of his fish with me, even though he had more than enough to fill his belly, and when I got annoyed and tried to help him see reason, he fireballed me and blew up my gases inside of me! If you're really that Night Fury, but now you're my size, then I've got a score to settle with you." He took a deep breath and hissed.

Hiccup suddenly stepped up beside Toothless. "Are you ready to fight both of us?" he demanded.

Toothless shook his head. "Hiccup, this dragon is probably a lot better at Terrible Terror fighting than we are. Do not get involved; you will only get yourself hurt."

"Yeah, step aside," the yellow warned him. "This is between him and me."

"I stand with my friend," Hiccup said defiantly, as he ran his tongue around his mouth in search of some clue as to how to breathe fire.

"Have it your way," the yellow one shrugged, hissed again... and stopped. "Wait a second. You just said I'm probably a better fighter than you. Better than both of you? What's up with that?"

"It's exactly like he said," Hiccup explained. "We got turned into Terrible Terrors about an hour ago by a human _seid-kona,_ a witch, and we're trying to figure out how to live in these bodies. We need some flying lessons, and we probably need to know to do the fire-breathing stuff."

"Your Night Fury friend can't teach you to fly?"

Toothless remained on his guard. "Flying with tail fins is very different from flying without them."

"Well, when I'm done with you, you can try flying without _wings!_ Purple guy, get out of my way or I'll have to murdelize you too."

Hiccup braced himself and didn't answer the yellow Terror. He called over his shoulder, "We could use a little back-up here!"

Fishlegs held back. "I think I'm allergic to fighting."

Tuff thought it over. "I love a good fight... but if I can't win, then it's not a good fight. I'll watch, and take bets on the winner."

"You're such an idiot!" Ruff sighed. "Dragons don't use money! What are you going to bet? Fish?"

"Hey, there's an idea!" Hiccup blurted out. "Yellow Terror, you're mad because Toothless wouldn't share his fish with you, right? What if he gave you some fish to make up for it?"

"I'm also mad because he shot me in the mouth," the yellow Terror replied hotly.

"Okay, then how many fish would it take to make you happy?"

"Are you talking about a bribe?" the yellow dragon demanded.

"Call it a peace offering," Hiccup suggested.

"Let me think about that," said the yellow.

"Make him pay!" the red female encouraged him.

"Do I have any say in this decision, Hiccup?" Toothless demanded.

"Bud, if you're smart, you'll take the deal if he offers you one. Catching fish is easy for you when you're a Night Fury, but winning a fight will be hard when you're a Terrible Terror. Plus, I don't want to see you get hurt."

"Okay, here's the deal, take it or leave it," the yellow one decided. "If you give me one fish a day for sixteen days, then I'll forget that the whole thing ever happened, and I'll give you your flying lessons. If you refuse, then you're toast and I'm the toaster."

"Why sixteen days?" Hiccup asked him.

The yellow looked a bit sheepish. "I have sixteen claws in all, so that's the highest number I can count to. Sixteen, or no deal."

Toothless smiled a toothy smile. "Deal!" he nearly shouted.

"Excellent!" said the yellow. "So when will you bring me today's fish?"

"What do you mean, today's fish?" Toothless asked, all innocence. "There is no 'today's fish.' "

"I thought we just made a deal!" the yellow one protested.

"We agreed to one fish a day for sixteen days. You didn't say which sixteen days," Toothless grinned. "I could start today, or tomorrow, or a year from now and still keep the deal."

"Hey, that's not –" He was drowned out by the laughter of the other Terrors in his nest, but this time, they were laughing at _him._

Toothless turned to Hiccup with a huge reptilian smile. "How would you rate that for cleverness, my clever friend?"

"I saw that angle a mile away," the Hiccup-dragon nodded, "but I'm glad you saw it too. Now we need some flying lessons."

The yellow was incredulous. "You expect me to help you after you tricked me like that? Really?"

"A deal is a deal," Toothless said reasonably. "We haven't broken our end of it, and if you teach us quickly and well, we still might bring you your first fish by the end of the day."

"But if you don't help us," Hiccup added, "then we'll never fly and you'll never get your fish. It all depends on you."

"You have a weird way of making me want to help you," said the yellow. He lay down, folded his wings, and glared at them.

"You know," the older red one said, "watching you guys go back and forth is really entertaining. I hate to see it end. How about if I give you the flying lessons?"

The yellow one looked betrayed. "Why would you want to do that?"

The red one smirked. "Because, if they really don't know how to fly, then they're going to crash and burn a few times while they learn. Six Terrible Terrors, crashing and burning all over the place! Doesn't that sound like fun?"

The yellow one nodded. "When you put it that way... I'll watch."

The red one approached Toothless. "If you're really a Night Fury, then you already know a few things about flying, right?"

"Right, in theory," he nodded, so enthusiastically that Hiccup almost had to laugh. "All I need to know is how to maintain stability in flight. I'm used to using my tail fins for that, but this tail doesn't have any fins, just a little pointy thing that doesn't help me much."

"That's because you're using your tail wrong," she told him flatly. "We Terrors don't just cruise through the air, looking smooth and impressive to impress the dragons of the opposite sex. We –"

"Speak for yourself!" a young blue male called from under the nest.

"Anyway," she went on, "we can't just glide through the air. Our bodies are inherently unstable, and the only way to overcome that is with continuous tail action. Our tails are constantly in motion, correcting little imbalances before they turn into big ones. That little pointy tip on our tails is really very effective as long as you don't stop using it. You could say we're forever on the edge of losing control, but we never quite go over the edge."

"Is she making any sense?" Snotlout called.

"Very much, I think," Toothless replied. "It is quite different from Night Fury flying, but I can understand the theory. I will try it now, and see how it works." He gathered himself and sprang into the air. Almost immediately, he rolled over on his back and went down, skidding across the ground. The Terrors in the nest broke up in fits of giggles.

"I think I know what I did wrong," he said, trying to maintain his dignity. He leaped skyward again. He rolled upside-down again, but this time he kept rolling and brought himself right-side-up again. He began curving off to the left, then compensated, went too far to the right, and commenced circling the Ingermans' woodpile in a circle so erratic, it reminded Hiccup of the first time his dragon friend had tried drawing on the ground with a tree branch. But he didn't crash. He came close several times, but he never lost it. He landed, skidded past Hiccup because he came in too fast, and walked back to him.

"I think I have figured it out," he said excitedly. "It is totally different from what I am accustomed to, and it is not graceful at all, but it works." He turned to the red female. "Thank you for the help. I never would have guessed that on my own."

"You're welcome," she said, and smiled. "You're very polite, you're clever, you learn quickly, and you're not bad-looking, either. I think orange just became my favorite color. If you're still around when mating season comes, then maybe you and I could... join the Mile-High Club, you know what I mean?"

"The human witch assured us that her spell will wear off in a few days," Toothless replied quickly.

"Oh, darn it," she shrugged. "Doesn't that figure – I finally found a good-looking male, and he's going to disappear before I can do anything about it! But I have to admit, I was hoping for more of an aerial disaster show than that."

"You will have no complaints, I am sure," he replied. "Now I have to teach these skills to five former humans who have never flapped a wing in their lives."

 **o**

 _A/N_  
 _My conclusions about how Terrible Terrors fly are based on closely watching the entrance of the Terrors in the "Not so fireproof on the inside" scene from the first movie._


	5. Chapter 5

**Night Terrors** Chapter 5

If the local Terrible Terrors wanted to enjoy the spectacle of newly-created dragons learning how to fly the hard way, they certainly got a fine show.

Hiccup tried the hardest to learn, and he was more familiar with the concepts of flight than the others, due to his greater time on Toothless' back. But in terms of his ability to do what Toothless told him, he had a relapse of his Hiccup-the-Useless persona. Every time he tried to fly, he found a new way to spin out and crash. This had the local Terrible Terrors rolling on the ground in laughter, kicking the air with their legs and thrashing their tails back and forth.

"Ignore them, my friend," Toothless advised him. "Once you run out of mistakes to make, you will be the best flyer of all of them. Except me, of course."

"That's encouraging, I guess," Hiccup sighed as he unbent his tail from his most recent aerial calamity and braced himself to try it again.

The quickest learner turned out to be Fishlegs. He grasped the concepts quickly, started by trying slowly instead of leaping for the clouds the way Snotlout and the twins did, and was soon able to trace a better circle in the sky than Toothless could manage. "It is only because you have no Night Fury habits to unlearn," Toothless fussed, unhappy that a beginner could do a better job in the air than he could.

Snotlout couldn't be bothered with mastering the basics. He wanted to touch the clouds first, breathe fire first, rescue Astrid first, and make Hiccup and Toothless look bad while he was doing it. Needless to say, he failed miserably at his first three goals, and the only one he made look bad was himself. But, to be fair, he did achieve one superlative: the local Terrors laughed harder at him than at any of his friends. Even Hiccup was soon flying better than Snotlout.

As for the twins, they saw these lessons as a competition, which surprised no one. When they competed against each other, they failed, which surprised them. When they stopped sabotaging each other's efforts so they could both compete against the rest of the group, they made good progress, which surprised their friends, especially Toothless.

"This is even more fun than yak-tipping!" Ruff exclaimed, and her brother nodded in full agreement. Hiccup and Fishlegs cringed; any time the twins agreed on something, it was sure to be bad news for everyone around them.

In any event, the five of them were able to take off, fly a few circles, and land without crashing, all within a few hours. Toothless decided that they had made remarkable progress, for a bunch of transformed humans with no aptitude for flying. But those few hours took them past sunset. Terrible Terrors were active mostly during daylight; their eyes were not as effective in the darkness as other dragons' eyes. This was a particular hardship for Toothless, who normally had the best night vision of them all, and had a hard time admitting that he couldn't see things in the dark.

"How are we going to work out the sleeping arrangements?" Fishlegs wondered.

"What do you mean?" Toothless asked.

"Well, we're all guys, except for Ruffnut, and one girl sleeping with a bunch of guys isn't the best idea, so... uhh..."

"That does not matter," Toothless said firmly. "Dragons are not attracted to other dragons except during the time of mating, and this is not the season for that. She cannot get into the kinds of trouble that you humans seem to love so much. It just cannot happen with us; the other males will show her no interest at all. She might as well be another male."

"Hey!" Ruff protested. "Maybe I'm not the shapeliest girl in the village, but you don't have to be cruel about it!"

"Yeah, that's _my_ job," Tuff added. "Anyway, I don't trust any of you with my sister for the night, no matter what the orange ex-Night Fury says."

"Now who's being cruel?" Toothless said, his head downcast.

"Guys, it's not worth fighting over," Hiccup cut in, trying to be the peacemaker. "The local Terrors said they have room for one or two of us in their nest, so Ruff and Tuff can sleep there. The rest of us can find another place to spend the night."

"That works for me," Ruff shrugged.

Tuff was not convinced. "You're sure those other males will leave my sister alone? Absolutely sure?"

"Completely sure," Toothless nodded.

Tuff turned to Ruff. "That means the same as 'absolutely,' right?"

"Just don't worry so much about it!" she snapped. "I can take care of myself if any of those dragons get fresh. Besides, maybe you didn't notice, but that red female came on to Toothless kind of strong. If the females make the first move when you're a dragon, then I've got nothing to worry about."

"Maybe," he nodded. "Or maybe that red female is just a man-crazy nutcase."

"I heard that, you mimsy little borogove!" the red female called from the nest. "I made a pass at your friend because he's hot and handsome, unlike you."

Tuff got annoyed at that. "Oh, so you want to trade insults, redhead? Well, your mother was a Fireworm and your father smelled of loganberries!"

"Enough, you guys!" Hiccup pleaded. "It's going to be hard enough to fall asleep tonight in strange bodies. Don't drag it out by antagonizing the locals all night. Tuff, Ruff, go join the group under the woodshed and try to stay out of trouble. Toothless, can you see any place where four Terrors might have room to fall asleep together?"

Toothless looked around, straining his eyes to see in the gathering darkness. "I think the fork of that tree has enough room for all of us."

"What if I fall out?" Snotlout demanded.

"Umm... fly?" Fishlegs suggested.

"What if I'm asleep when I fall out?" Snotlout clarified.

"Umm... crash?" Fishlegs suggested. "That's what Meatlug does when she falls asleep in mid-air."

Ruff liked the sound of that. "Dragon-Snotlout doing a face-plant in his sleep? This, I've got to see!"

Tuffnut grinned too. "I'm going to stay awake so I can watch this!"

Snotlout looked annoyed. "I told you before, Fishlegs, I am _not_ going to copy your stupid Gronckle!"

"Okay, okay," Fishlegs shrugged. "You can copy some other kind of stupid dragon instead. I won't mind."

Hiccup leaned over and murmured to Toothless, "I'm starting to wonder if you were right the first time, bud. Maybe we _should_ leave these guys to their own devices, and rescue Astrid on our own."

"You make the call, my friend," Toothless replied. "She is your future mate, not mine, and you know as little about being a Terrible Terror as I do. But tell me something, please. What is this 'bud' that you keep calling me? Do I remind you of an unopened flower for some reason?"

"No, it's short for 'buddy,' which means 'friend,' " Hiccup explained.

"Ahh, thank you," Toothless said. "I have often wondered about that, but I could never ask you. It is wonderful to be able to talk to you as a near-equal, and understand you clearly."

"Yeah," Hiccup nodded. "That will be the only bad part of Skuld's spell wearing off. We'll go back to being a human and a Night Fury, and we won't be able to communicate so well."

"That will be unpleasant," Toothless agreed, "but it should not happen tonight or tomorrow. We should get some sleep." The two of them flapped up to the fork of the tree and took the two best places to sleep. After a few minutes, Fishlegs and Snotlout joined them, while the twins found roosts in the nest under the Ingermans' woodshed.

Snotlout disappointed the twins by _not_ falling out of the tree... until after they had drifted off to sleep, so they missed it.

The next morning, Toothless led the ex-humans down to the sea stacks and taught them how to breathe fire. Several of the local Terrors tagged along to watch, offer rude comments, and laugh at their mistakes, of which there were many. Hiccup nearly exploded himself on his first try, the twins couldn't resist the chance to flame each other, and Snotlout somehow flamed himself, blackening his yellow scales with scorch marks from his head to halfway down his torso. Toothless was a patient teacher, the locals mixed some good advice with their laughter and insults, and they all had their fires under control, to varying degrees, by lunchtime. Ruffnut turned out to be the fastest learner in this exercise, with Fishlegs a very close second.

"Are we ready to go find Astrid?" Ruff asked eagerly.

"We still need one more thing," Hiccup answered her. "Lunch!"

"I am not sure I can help you there," Toothless said. "I know nothing about the Terrible Terror method of catching fish."

"Can't we just take them from the feeding trays, like all the other dragons do?" Fishlegs wondered.

Hiccup noticed Toothless start to hit himself in the head with his wing, but he stopped himself. "Yes, I suppose we could do that," he said, embarrassed that he hadn't thought of it. They flapped over to the nearest feeding tray, enjoying the ability to go straight there instead of walking along the winding paths and catwalks, and learned how to eat like dragons. They had to overcome some squeamishness at the idea of swallowing a whole fish, but the fish they found were big enough that they didn't have to swallow more than one or two of them. Toothless, of course, had no problem at all with this part of the learning process.

"Okay, now what?" Tuffnut asked.

"We find Astrid and rescue her so I can be the hero, of course," Snotlout answered confidently.

Ruff shook her head. "You mean we find Astrid and Hiccup rescues her so you can be the jerk, right? That's how it usually works."

"Hey, listen, green-face! I only have to win once, I only have to show her how awesome I really am _once,_ and then she'll be mine forever! That's how it works with Viking heroes, right?" Everyone else rolled his eyes, even Toothless. Hiccup was tempted to point out that Snotlout didn't look much like a Viking hero anymore, but decided against it.

He spoke up. "I think we're as ready as we'll ever be, and the longer we wait, the further away that ship will be, and the harder it will be to find. I think we ought to take off and start searching now."

"I concur," Toothless nodded. "More flight practice, and more fire drills, will not make a noticeable difference in our rescue skills."

"So... how are we going to find them?" Tuff asked.

"Skuld said that she and Arngrim wanted to sell Toothless to Viggo Grimborn," Hiccup answered. "I think he's usually to the south of us at this time of year, so we should fly south to look for them."

"But it's a big ocean, isn't it?" Fishlegs reminded him.

"Yes, it is," Hiccup nodded, "so we'll split up in pairs. Ruff and Tuff, you fly to the southeast. Lout, Legs, you go to the southwest. Toothless and I will go straight south."

"What do we do if we find them?" Ruff wondered.

"Set their sail on fire so they'll have to row," Hiccup answered. "With only two of them rowing, they won't get very far, so we can find them easily when we all come looking for them. See if there will be any problems with turning Astrid loose, then fly back here. And _please,_ don't flame the wrong ship! We'll all meet here by sunset. Then, early next morning, we'll all take off together and fly to where the ship is, and we'll do a rescue."

"How?" Fishlegs queried him. "I've done a few mental calculations, comparing the load-lifting ability of a Terrible Terror against Astrid's estimated body mass, and there's no way we can lift her off a ship or carry her home."

Hiccup smiled. "Legs, are you forgetting that Astrid will be a Terrible Terror just like us? I think the six of us can pick her up and carry her, especially if we can use one of Arngrim's furs as a sort of flying carpet."

"Oh! Yeah, that will work," Legs nodded enthusiastically.

"All righty, then! Terrors of Berk, let's fly!" Six colorful little dragons bounded awkwardly into the air, split up into three pairs, and headed out across the sea.


	6. Chapter 6

**Night Terrors** Chapter 6

As Hiccup and Toothless winged their way south, correcting their course with their tails every few moments, Toothless called, "We ought to put some distance between us, so we can search more effectively."

"I'd rather stay close together," Hiccup replied, "because I want to talk to you. I've always wanted to talk to you! I want to know where you came from, and what kinds of crazy things you've seen, and what your hopes and dreams are. Finally, you can tell me! And if you want to know more about me, then you can finally understand me when I tell you."

"I do, indeed, wish to know more about you, my friend. Much more!" They began telling each other their life's stories, constantly interrupting each other to ask questions or offer comments. It turned out that they had even more in common than they had realized. Hiccup barely remembered his mother and had never had any kind of relationship with his father, while Toothless had never even met his own father and hadn't seen his mother in years. As the only dragon of his kind in the nest, he had always felt like an outcast, so he could easily understand how Hiccup had felt in the years before the two of them had met.

Toothless was describing how it felt to serve a queen dragon who ate her under-performing subjects when he spotted something ahead and to their left. "I think it might be the sail of a ship," he decided, "but it is slightly blurry. Curse these Terrible Terror eyes! With my own eyes, I could easily see details at a great distance."

"Let's check it out," Hiccup suggested. They banked to the left and closed the distance to the unknown ship. It wasn't going very fast, seeing how it was headed south and the wind was out of the east. As they drew closer, they could see two people in it, an adult man holding the tiller and a young blonde woman bailing out water with a bucket. An assortment of leather straps were nailed to the deck in various places, with a bulging leather sack in the middle of them.

"Those straps must be for holding a Night Fury down," Hiccup decided.

"I wonder how they planned to do that if the spell wore off while they were asleep," Toothless mused.

"What _I_ wonder is, how did they plan to make the Night Fury hold still while they fastened all those straps?" Hiccup returned.

"Then we are agreed – they did not plan this kidnapping very well," Toothless nodded.

"Bud, I think we agree on just about everything," Hiccup replied.

"Except about bringing baby Typhoomerangs into the house," his friend said archly.

"And about whether it's a good idea to fight a Whispering Death," Hiccup shot back. "But aside from a few little details like those, we think pretty much the same."

Toothless nodded somberly. "It will be sad, in a way, when the spell wears off and we can no longer communicate. I badly miss my own body, and my tail fins, and my eyes, and everything else that makes a Night Fury special. But this chance to talk to you and listen to you has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I am glad I was able to enjoy."

Hiccup sideslipped and tapped Toothless' wingtip with his own. "I hear you, bud. I'm going to miss this, too. But there's one thing we can still do together, no matter what – fly into battle!"

"Yes!" Toothless snarled happily. "We are going to flame their sail, correct? You hit the lower-left corner, and I will hit the lower right." They passed next to the ship from the stern toward the bow, their flight paths a mirror-image of each other.

Arngrim noticed them as they flew by. "Hey, Skuld, what are those Terrible Terrors doing way out here? I thought you said they couldn't learn to fly fast enough to catch us."

"They can't," she reassured him. "Nobody could learn to fly on their own in one day. Those must be wild Terrors, just checking us out to see if we have any fish."

A moment later, both Terrors passed the ship, turned back, and flamed a stretch of the bottom of the ship's one sail. The flames spread and climbed upward hungrily along the dry fabric. "Cut it loose!" Arngrim shouted. "Cut it away before it falls and sets the whole ship on fire!" They both worked with their belt knives and managed to cut the sail down, and then used the loose ends of the ropes to pull it over the side.

"Do you have an extra sail on this ship?" Skuld asked him as she looked around. "The right answer would be 'yes.' "

"The true answer is 'No,' " the Northlander explained lamely. "I wanted to fill the ship with furs for trading, and I left behind anything that took up too much space. Besides, it's not the stormy season, so I didn't think I'd need any extra sails."

She grunted in exasperation. "Please tell me you didn't leave the oars behind, too!"

"No, I'm not _that_ stupid, girl!" he burst out. "And I'll thank you for watching your tone of voice when you speak to me. I am the chief of my tribe, I bankrolled this expedition, and I –"

"And you left us with no way of moving except two oars, one for each of us!" she nearly shouted. "It will take us a week to reach the nearest safe land, and we're going to run out of food in three days!"

"At least I held up my part of the deal," he retorted. "Those Terrors couldn't have picked a better way to slow us down than to shoot the base of our sail, and they were perfectly coordinated when they did it. And they didn't even try to smell us for fish! Wild Terrors, you say? Not likely! Those are some of our dragon's friends, the ones you promised could never follow us in time!"

"I still don't think they could," she answered, "but fighting about it won't get us any closer to land. I've got my oar; you take yours and we'll work out a rowing rhythm."

He let a hundred angry retorts die on his lips. There would be time enough to settle with her later, after they met up with Viggo Grimborn and sold their dragon and got the money. For now, she was right about rowing. He grimaced as he gripped the oar. "Stroke!" he called. "Stroke!" With only two rowers, the heavy ship was barely moving. The pair of Terrors was still circling them, but there was nothing he could do about that.

One of those Terrors suddenly whipped across the deck, circled the leather bag once while chirping something in Terrible Terror language, and rejoined his friend. The two of them banked away and headed north.

"I think Berk might be closer than three days away," Arngrim decided. "Maybe we should turn around and go back there before we starve."

"Back to Berk?" Skuld echoed. "Back to the place where I did magic on the chief's son, and you helped me do it? We're better off starving than falling into Stoick's hands! Keep rowing!"

"Don't give me orders, girl," he rumbled. But he kept rowing.

A quarter of a mile away, Toothless turned to Hiccup. "What did you say to them when you crossed their deck, that was worth the risk of them striking you down?"

"They had oars in their hands, not weapons, so I felt pretty safe," the Hiccup-dragon replied. "And I wasn't talking to them. I was telling Astrid to be brave, because we were coming to rescue her."

"Did you hear her say anything in reply?" his friend asked.

"I'm not sure because she sounded muffled, but I think she said, 'Just get me out of here, and I'll rescue myself!' That's a very typical thing for Astrid to say. I guess that means she's all right in there."

"Then let us get home and organize everyone," Toothless concluded. "Tomorrow morning, we will mount a rescue mission, and you will look like a hero to your future mate!"

"I don't care that much about the 'hero' part," Hiccup sighed. "I just want Astrid back. Hey, why don't we just flame the leather bag and get her out that way?"

"I fear that the smoke would kill her before the bag burned enough to let her out," Toothless said.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Hiccup replied. "Not only that, but she doesn't know how to fly, and the two of us can't carry her by ourselves, so letting her out wouldn't do her much good."

The other four were already back in Berk when Hiccup and Toothless arrived. "We didn't find any ships at all," Fishlegs said.

"We found some fishing boats from another tribe," Ruff added with a vicious grin, "and we took some target practice on them!"

"You did _WHAT?!"_ Hiccup nearly exploded.

"Hey, we didn't hurt anybody, so it's okay, right?" Tuffnut clarified. "We just burned their sails a little, and burned their nets a little, and burned their rudders a little... but we didn't burn _them,_ so it's like, 'no blood, no foul,' right?"

"Right!" his sister smirked.

"Wrong!" Hiccup retorted. "Do you want to start the wars between humans and dragons all over again? The next time those fishermen see a Terrible Terror, they'll throw spears first and ask questions later! Then the Terrors will fight back, just like any dragon will fight when people attack them, and the other dragons will take their side, and the next thing you know, we're back to midnight dragon raids and losing all our fish and seeing our houses go up in flames! You don't want to see those bad old days come back, do you?"

Tuff scowled. "Well, what good is it to be a fire-breathing dragon if we don't actually _do_ it?"

"You'll do it tomorrow," Hiccup reassured him. "We found Arngrim's ship, and we're going to rescue Astrid in the morning. Arngrim and Skuld will fight back, and that's when you'll get your chance to breathe some fire."

"Is there a way we can make it up to those fishermen so they won't be mad at all the dragons?" Fishlegs wondered.

Toothless considered that. "If Vikings are like dragons, then you can bribe them with food."

Hiccup thought fast. "Well, Vikings aren't exactly like dragons, but we do like our food. We'll take Toothless' idea and run with it."

"Bringing food to a bunch of fishermen doesn't sound like fun," Ruffnut fussed.

"We won't bring them food. We'll bring them fish," Hiccup explained. "When they see some of us carrying a fish to them and dropping it on their decks, they'll realize that not all Terrible Terrors are _fire-breathing pests,"_ and he glared at Ruff and Tuff when he said that. "They won't know what to think of us after that, but at least they won't be openly hostile, and that's the best we can hope for."

"We still don't know how Terrible Terrors catch fish," Toothless noted.

"Maybe the locals will teach us in exchange for part of our catch," Hiccup thought out loud.

"I heard that!" called the red female from just inside the nest. "Sure, I'll give you fishing lessons in exchange for a couple of fish. Just watching you guys trying to learn is worth it."

"Okay, we've got a plan," Hiccup decided. "In the morning, we'll rescue Astrid. In the afternoon, we'll learn to fish, and we'll pay off those fishermen so they won't be angry at dragons."

"What happens after that?" Fishlegs asked.

"I guess that depends on how long it takes before we turn back into people," Hiccup replied. "I don't know."


	7. Chapter 7

**Night Terrors** Chapter 7

The five former humans and the former Night Fury still didn't sleep soundly that second night. Their bodies were too unfamiliar, and the ex-humans were getting hungry – even though their dragon bodies expected only one meal a day, their human minds were used to three. They all rose before sunrise and were eager to get on with their adventure.

"What's the plan?" Snotlout asked.

"We're going to repeatedly swoop at Arngrim and Skuld, and keep flaming in their general direction until they jump overboard," Hiccup began. "Once they're over the side, we'll land on the ship, cut the leather bag open with our claws, and let Astrid out. Then we'll get her to stand on one of Arngrim's furs, we'll each grab part of that fur in our claws, and we'll carry her back to Berk."

"First question," Tuffnut cut in. "Why can't Astrid fly herself back to Berk? Why do we have to carry her?"

"That's two questions," Ruff muttered.

"Simple," Hiccup explained. "Astrid hasn't had any flying lessons like we have, so she can't fly. She probably doesn't know how to make fire, either. For the first time since she was a baby, she's actually helpless and needs to be rescued."

Ruff smirked. "You're going to enjoy that part, aren't you, Prince Charming?"

"Not really," he answered. "I'm not used to her being helpless. It will be too weird; I can't relate to her that way. The sooner she gets back to normal, the happier I'll be."

"Even though she'll hit you in the arm?" Fishlegs marveled.

"Legs, I've gone a day and a half being worried sick about her. I'm actually looking forward to her little love taps."

Tuff leaned over toward his sister. "Remind me to never fall in love. It makes you weird."

She hit him with her forefoot. _"That's_ for being a stupid _boy!"_ she snarled.

Tuffnut smiled at her. "That didn't hurt! You're doing it wrong. You need to take some lessons from Astrid."

Toothless asked, "All right, here is question number two. What if the two humans act like typical stubborn Vikings and they do not jump overboard when we want them to?"

The Hiccup-dragon shrugged his shoulders. "If they do that, then I guess we'll have to set their clothes on fire so they _have_ to jump in the water. I don't want to hurt anybody, but they're doing their best to hurt us, so it's not like we started it. If we have to make them a little warm, that's a very small payback, compared to what they did to us and what they want to do to Astrid."

"Hey, don't feel bad about doing the right thing!" Snotlout exclaimed. "They turned us into dragons, so they deserve a little dragon fire!"

"Yeah!" Tuff agreed. "Fair is fair!"

Hiccup tried to head off this impending rebellion against his plans. "Guys, did you forget the part about 'we don't want to make people angry at dragons?' "

Fishlegs weighed in. "Technically, that pair is already angry at us, because they're selling Toothless to Viggo Grimborn... or they think they are. I don't think a few Terrible Terror fire attacks are going to change their minds about us. But we might change their minds about staying in the ship."

Hiccup was stunned. "Fishlegs? You're the most mild-mannered and peaceful one in the group! Are you actually saying you think we ought to flame those guys?"

"I guess it's like I said earlier," Fishlegs explained. "We're thinking with Terrible Terrors' brains now, and that's affecting how we look at things. I never wanted to hurt anybody before, but when I think about those two planning to sell Astrid as a slave girl... I want to _hurt_ them!" Snotlout and the twins snorted puffs of smoke and exclaimed, "Yeah!"

"Okay, okay, slight change in plan," Hiccup conceded. "As soon as we find them, we'll flame their clothes to be sure they jump in the water and stay there." Four Terrors nodded and pawed the ground in grim agreement. "Don't aim for their faces! Just set their clothes on fire. When the ship is in sight, we'll split up into three groups, just like we did when we were searching for them. That way, if they throw a net at us, they can't catch all of us at once. Then each group will take turns attacking until the humans jump overboard, and we'll rescue Astrid and go home."

"One last question," Fishlegs wondered. "If Astrid can't cut her way out of the bag with her own claws, then how will our claws do any better?"

"Umm... good question," Hiccup said. "Okay, if we can't cut through the leather, then we'll carry the bag back home and get one of the humans to open it for us."

"How do you propose to arrange that when you can no longer speak their language?" Toothless asked.

"We can write some runes in the ground with our claws," Hiccup answered. "Even if they don't really believe it's us and they don't think we're telling the truth, they'll open the bag just to appease their curiosity. Any other questions? Okay, let's fly!" With a frantic flutter of wings, the six newly-transformed Terrible Terrors set off to rescue their friend.

It took an hour of flying, and ten minutes of searching, before they located the ship with no sail and two oars. "Split up into three teams!" Hiccup called.

"Wait a second, Hiccup!" Fishlegs interrupted. "There's another ship headed this way! Off to the left!"

"Is it another trading boat like Arngrim's ship?" Toothless asked.

"No, this one is a lot bigger than that!" Fishlegs called back. "It looks like it has catapults on it. And I think I recognize the man who's giving the orders. No helmet, short dark hair, short beard, big shoulder pads..."

"It's Viggo Grimborn!" Hiccup exclaimed. "He came to meet his dragon-sellers halfway. They're over a mile away from here, but they've got the wind behind them, so they'll sail pretty fast. We've got less than ten minutes to settle our score with Arngrim and get Astrid out of there before Viggo's ship gets close enough to cause problems."

"Then let us do this thing, and do it well!" Toothless growled. Three pairs of dragons split up and swooped in on the two humans, who were scrambling to ship their oars and grab some weapons as their tiny adversaries closed in.

The twins were the first to get within firing range, and they targeted Chief Arngrim Dammen. Their shots were on target, but didn't last long enough to do anything more than make him feel warm. He swung a sword at them as they zipped past him, and barely missed Ruffnut. Dragon-Snotlout and Dragon-Fishlegs hit him from behind while he was facing the first pair, and they kept their fires on target long enough to set his pants ablaze. He dropped his sword and leaped over the side with a cry of, "Skuld! Do something!"

Skuld the Sorceress spun and ducked to the side, which made Hiccup and Toothless' shots miss (and nearly sent her into the drink right next to Arngrim). "I'll reverse my spell!" she decided. "I'll turn these dragons back into humans and see if they can swim!" Evidently, she didn't think the ex-humans could understand her. Once again, she crossed her arms at the wrists, hopped from one foot to the other, and chanted,

"Najeneun ttasaroun inganjeogin yeoja!  
"Keopi hanjanui yeoyureul aneun pumgyeok inneun yeoja!  
"Oppan – hey, quit that!"

Hiccup had noticed her chanting as he pulled up from his attack. He couldn't maneuver quickly enough to make a difference, but he'd shouted to Toothless, "Distract her, bud! Quick!" The orange Terror had turned on a wingtip, dived back toward her with a perfect mix of Night Fury style and Terrible Terror technique, and, unable to flame again on such short notice, he'd tangled his claws into her hair. That had the desired result; Skuld interrupted her chant just before she finished.

Fishlegs was the book-knowledge expert of the group, but Hiccup had encountered some ancient lore here and there as well. Specifically, he'd learned that, if a witch makes a mistake while casting a spell, that spell will often rebound onto the caster instead of the intended target. Toothless' distraction proved the truth of that. With a loud "pop," Skuld the Sorceress vanished. In her place stood a blue-green Terrible Terror, blinking and immobile on the rowing-bench of the ship.

"Awesome!" Fishlegs shouted. "Way to go, Toothless! I mean Swift-invisible... oh, whoever! Way to go!"

Tuff exclaimed, "She got perfect payback!" and stuck his tongue out at her as he flew by.

Ruff grinned. "She might have some real powers now, but she _still_ can't do anything right!"

"Should we flame her so she knows who's the boss?" Snotlout asked.

"We don't have time for that," Hiccup shouted. "Viggo's ship is almost within catapult range! Just sink your claws into Astrid's sack and let's get out of here!" The group did as he said, and they were off and gone within fifteen seconds, leaving a burned, wet Arngrim climbing back into his ship with no sail, no sorceress, and no dragon for Viggo Grimborn, who would probably be very displeased that he'd brought his ship all this way for nothing.

The bag squirmed as they flapped homeward with it. "What's going on out there?" a female Terror's voice demanded.

"We're rescuing you," Hiccup explained.

"Who's 'we?' " she demanded. "I can't see anything from in here!"

"Me, Hiccup, and all your friends who got turned into Terrible Terrors at the same time you did."

"Mostly me," Snotlout threw in. "I'm your hero."

"Who's 'me?' " she asked.

"Who's 'me?' I'm Snotlout, of course!" he burst out.

"Ignore him, Astrid," Fishlegs said. "Hiccup did the planning and Toothless did most of the work."

The bag lurched as someone missed a flap. "Quit hitting me with your wings!" Ruffnut protested to her brother.

"Then don't fly so close to me!" he retorted.

 _"You're_ the one who's too close to _me!"_ she shot back.

"Hiccup, tell your girlfriend she's too heavy and she needs to lose a few pounds." That was Snotlout.

 _"You_ tell her," Hiccup answered.

"I heard that!" came the female-dragon voice from inside the sack. "Why won't you idiots let me out of this bag?"

"Our claws can't cut through the leather," Fishlegs tried to explain.

"My claws are going to cut _you_ if you don't get me out of here!" she snarled back.

A moment later, she got her wish. Skuld's spell wore off, just as the sorceress had promised. The leather bag split as its occupant suddenly returned to human size, and six humans and a Night Fury plummeted into the cold sea just below them.


	8. Chapter 8

**Night Terrors** Chapter 8

The six humans hit the water with six limp splashes. A moment later, the Night Fury joined them with a much bigger splash, almost landing on top of Astrid. The dragon flapped his wings frantically, but was unable to take off.

"Bud, easy! Take it easy! Just stay with us," Hiccup soothed him. Toothless stopped his flapping and just floated. The humans held onto him so they wouldn't sink. Hiccup stayed near his reptilian friend's head, stroking the broad muzzle.

"Are you okay, bud?" The dragon crooned nervously; Hiccup punched the water with his free hand. "Darn it! You can't talk to me anymore! Everything is back to normal... and I don't know how I feel about that."

Astrid worked her way over next to him. "Would somebody _please_ tell me what is going on around here? I feel like I've been in a bag for days, going hungry and getting hit with something whenever I struggled! What's all this about talking to Toothless?"

"It _has_ been days," Hiccup began, "and I am _so_ glad to see you back!" He hugged her, and she didn't resist him. He went on, "The whole story would take half a day to tell, so let me sum that up: Skuld the Sorceress turned us all into Terrible Terrors. Then she grabbed you because you were black, so she thought you were Toothless. Her plan was to sell you to Viggo Grimborn for a small fortune. She figured we couldn't catch her because it would take too long for us to learn how to fly and fight like dragons. But she left the real Toothless behind, and he got us up in the air and flaming in no time, with some help from some real Terrible Terrors. As of right now, Skuld has turned herself into a Terror by mistake, and Arngrim Dammen is dealing with an angry Viggo who came a long way to get a Night Fury and didn't get one. So all we have to do is find a way to get back to land, and our little adventure will be over."

"You guys actually learned how to fly?" Astrid was incredulous... and envious.

"Yeah, and it was really cool!" Fishlegs said.

"So was breathing fire!" Snotlout added from the other side of the dragon.

"But the part I really liked was being able to talk to Toothless and understand him," Hiccup finished. "I am definitely going to miss that."

"Did he have a lot to say?" she asked.

"No more than a typical Viking, I guess," Hiccup replied. "He wasn't a chatterbox or anything. He was a bit arrogant here and there, but seeing how he's been the number-one dragon all his life, I guess that's understandable."

"Guys, this is all well and good," Tuff interrupted, "but I'm getting cold, and we need to find a way out of the ocean before we either freeze or drown!"

"Yeah," Ruff agreed. "Neither of those is a very cool way to go."

"This is some rescue!" Astrid exclaimed. "You came in here, but didn't you have a plan for getting out?"

"He's the brains, sweetheart!" Snotlout shot back, pointing at Hiccup.

"A few seconds ago, we were miniature dragons flying back to Berk and everything was good, sort of," Hiccup said defensively. "We just turned back into humans a minute ago! Give me a little time to come up with a new plan for the new situation, will you?"

Fishlegs said, "Can't you get into Toothless' saddle and fly and get help? He's still got his riding gear on, which makes sense, seeing how he was wearing it when he got transformed."

"I'm not sure he can take off from the water," Hiccup answered. "I think he needs something to push off against. And even if we can do it, that leaves the five of you alone in the ocean, freezing, with nothing to help you stay afloat."

"Except each other," Fishlegs corrected him.

"Yeah, I guess we could use Fatboy here as a flotation device," Snotlout said archly. Fishlegs ignored him.

"Anyway, I think we ought to stick together and wait until we see a sail," Hiccup decided. "Toothless can help us stay warm, and the cold water doesn't seem to bother him. We're still close enough to Berk that one of our ships should pass this way soon. Then Toothless can shoot some flares and get their attention, and we'll be rescued."

"If we don't freeze to death first," Astrid corrected him. "And if the sail we see isn't Viggo's ship, and we don't wind up even worse off than we are now."

"You know," Snotlout said slowly, "I kind of miss Astrid not being able to talk." She tried to hit him, but the Night Fury was in the way.

Fortunately, neither of Astrid's predictions came true. They saw a sail about ten minutes later, Toothless shot small firebolts into the air just above it until it altered course to investigate, and the humans were soon drying off and warming up on the deck of one of Berk's fishing boats.

"What about Toothless?" Hiccup asked the captain.

"If he tries to climb over the gunwale, he'll capsize us," Captain Stintmore answered with a doubtful glance over the side, where Toothless was treading water and looking unhappy. "Besides, I can't waste any time on dragons. I've made three unproductive cruises in a row, and if I don't bring back some fish this time, Chief Stoick will have my head on a pole!"

Hiccup shook his head. "If you come home with Stoick's nephew and his son's girlfriend, I don't think he'll be very mad at you. In fact, he'll probably give you a reward!"

"Aren't you going to let him rescue you, too?" Astrid wondered.

"I have to stay with Toothless," Hiccup said. "We'll swim to shore if he can't push off against something to take off. It will take us a while, but we'll make it."

"You need to push off against something?" the captain cut in. "I can help you there! We're close to the Hevimettle Rocks!" He got his bearings and pointed off to port. "They're about a quarter of a mile in that direction. You can barely see the spray where the waves pass over them; they break the surface at low tide. I can't guess how many nets they've snagged and how many ships have run into them at night! They're nothing but a curse to sailors... but if your dragon can use them as a launch pad to take off, then go for it."

"Great! Thank you, sir," Hiccup said politely. "Guys, enjoy your ride, but we'll probably get home before you do."

"That sounds like a challenge!" Snotlout called. "I'm a Jorgenson, and we never finish last! Captain, get this boat moving!" He began blowing on the sail. Astrid rolled her eyes, Fishlegs shook his head, and the twins watched to see if it would do any good.

Hiccup climbed back over the side onto his dragon's back. Toothless looked back and grunted quizzically. "We want to go that way," Hiccup said as he pointed where the captain had indicated. The Night Fury began dog-paddling as the fishing boat came about and returned to Berk. Only the sail was visible when Toothless suddenly stopped paddling. His paws had found the rocks. He stood, spread his wings, then looked back at Hiccup.

"Do it, bud! You've been waiting for this for days!" Hiccup braced himself as the Night Fury sprang into the air with a roar, dripping water as he flew nearly straight up. Once he'd built up some airspeed, he did a quick spin to hasten the drying process, then took Hiccup for his customary thrill ride that was long overdue.

"That ship is going to beat us home if we keep flying like this," Hiccup said out loud, knowing that his friend couldn't understand him anymore. "Aww, who cares! Flying with you is better than beating Snotlout anyway. In fact I think flying with you is better than doing my own flying, because... it's with you." Toothless nodded as if he understood, just before he went into a flat spin with a tail-flip.

 **o**

The fishing boat did, indeed, return to Berk before Hiccup and Toothless did. The teens told their stories to Stoick, who would not have believed them unless Astrid told the same tale, which she did. He gave the fishing-boat captain and his crew the day off and five silver coins each, then searched the sky for his son. Finding Toothless in the air wasn't hard, and as soon as Stoick could see that Hiccup was all right, he returned to his daily routine, much relieved.

When Hiccup and Toothless finally landed, they didn't go straight to Stoick, or to Gobber. They landed near the Ingerman family's woodshed. The Terrible Terrors hissed in fear and pulled away as Toothless walked toward them. Then he stopped, coughed three times, and deposited a stomach-full of fish right in front of them.

"That's payment for the fishing lessons for the red one, or for the offer of lessons, even though you never got the chance to teach us," Hiccup explained. "It's also Fish Number One out of sixteen for the yellow one, and some extras for everyone else. I wish you guys could still understand me. You helped save our lives, and I'm not going to forget that." The red Terror cheeped at him, but none of them left the nest until the Night Fury had flown away. Then the whole nest of Terrors descended on the small pile of fish, which was quickly reduced to an even smaller pile of bones.

The human-again friends all gathered by the training ring so the other five teens could renew acquaintances with their dragons, who hadn't seen their riders in days and were very happy to see them again. The ones with sensitive noses spent several minutes sniffing their riders up and down, looking confused. "It must be because we still smell like Terrible Terrors somehow," Fishlegs decided.

"It was kind of neat to see what it's like to be a dragon," Hiccup said. "Talking to Toothless was definitely amazing. But I was born to be a human, and I'm glad I'm back."

"I'm glad, too," Fishlegs nodded, "but I learned so much about dragons from being one, I might have to start Volume Two of the Book of Dragons so I'll have room to write it all down!"

"It sounds like I missed quite an experience," Astrid said with a touch of sadness. "While you guys were flying and breathing fire, I spent the whole time tied up in a sack!" Then her eyes narrowed. "Hiccup, what are all those fresh bruises on your arms? Have you been letting another girl hit you while I was away?"

"No! Those are from crash-landing onto the rocks while I was learning to fly!" Hiccup said quickly. "We all have some bruises, and I got more than my share. Learning how to be a Terrible Terror wasn't all fun and games, you know."

"Speak for yourself." Snotlout puffed out his chest. "Now you all know that I'm awesome, no matter what body I'm in!"

"Yeah, right," Ruffnut muttered. "So... what happens next?"

"The next thing you two do," Hiccup began, "is catch some fish with your dragon, and deliver them to those fishing boats that you persecuted when you were Terrible Terrors. You need to make things right with them."

"That's no fun!" Tuffnut protested.

"It's not about fun, it's about doing the right thing," Hiccup admonished them. "And if Toothless and I have to follow you around all day to make sure you do it, then we will!"

"Definitely not fun," Ruff muttered as the two of them slouched toward their dragon.

"What are we going to do about Skuld and Arngrim?" Astrid asked.

"If Viggo doesn't take care of them for us, you mean?" Hiccup answered. "They'll never fool us again. If Dad sees either of them within half a mile of Berk, he'll order the catapults to lock and load. I think Skuld knows only that one spell, and we've seen that it's not the greatest spell in the world if you want to take advantage of somebody. Even if she learns more spells, she just doesn't have the gift of doing things right, so there's nothing she can do to us that we can't fix."

"Because we _can_ do things right!" Snotlout shouted, pumping his fist.

"Yes, Mister Small Yellow Dragon, we can do things right," Hiccup said with a straight face. "Or should I call you what Toothless calls you?" Snotlout wilted, Fishlegs stifled a snort, and Astrid looked puzzled. Fishlegs whispered an explanation in her ear, which made her giggle.

Hiccup gave Toothless' head an affectionate rub. "Yeah, we friends can do things right, when we do them together. Can't we, bud?" Toothless grinned and rumbled as though he understood.

 _THE END_

 **o**

 _A/N_  
 _This story isn't my most profound work ever; I'll acknowledge that right up front. It's a fluffy bit of fun that I wrote because I was all out of profound ideas, and I got restless with nothing to write, so I made something up. If it serves any purpose beyond simple entertainment, it's to strengthen my claim as the King of Dragon-Transform Stories._

 _This story's genesis began from two directions at once. One angle was my wish to write a sequel to "Do You Mind?" in which I'd find a different way for the humans to talk to their dragons. The other angle was my desire to write another dragon-transform story, this time featuring Snotlout. You'd assume that I would turn him into a Monstrous Nightmare because, in most dragon-transform stories, the character in question turns into the type of dragon he/she rides. But I thought it would be more interesting (and funny) if Snotlout turned into the smallest type of dragon instead of the biggest. How would his towering ego respond to such a humiliation? But I couldn't work out how the story would unfold from there. As I was mentally casting around for story ideas, the concept of turning the whole gang into Terrible Terrors hit me. That seemed to have a lot more potential, and it also worked as a sort of sequel to "Do You Mind?" So I started writing, just to see where my words led me, and here we are. Of course, the Snotlout's-deflated-ego angle still showed up in a few places._

 _My original intent was for Skuld's spell to wear off at a slightly different time for each victim. The six rescuers would arrive over Arngrim's ship, only to find Astrid in human form and in full control of the situation, holding Arngrim and Skuld prisoner with Arngrim's sword. Then the teens would start turning human and plunging into the North Sea, one by one, and the "rescuers" would have to be rescued. That would have been mildly amusing, and very much in character for Astrid. But there's no way she could have maneuvered a sailing ship around to save her friends all by herself, and her prisoners certainly would have done nothing to help her, so that would have strained the limits of plausibility. But I didn't want to sink to the stereotypical level of having Hiccup ride to his girlfriend's rescue, either, so I gave the honor of the battle-winning strike to Toothless instead._

 _In case anyone didn't recognize it, Skuld's spell consists of the words and the dance to "Gangnam Style" by Psy.  
_


End file.
